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A New Way to Report Fraudulent Activity on Google My Business

Google has posted an announcement that there is a new way for users to report fraudulent activity on Google My Business/Google Maps. You can access this form here and submit a report to the Google My Business team.

Google said if you come across misleading information or fraudulent activity on Google Maps to the name, phone number, or URL of a business, you may use this form to submit your complaint. Google reviewed the submitted complaints with their guidelines.

Google also said if your complaint is not related to spam/fraudulent activity on the phone number, name or URL of the business, we will not be able to review your complaint. If you have other problems about Google Maps you can follow these steps.

Marisaa Nordhal, community manager from Google said in Google My Buisness Help thread?

“If you come across a business name, phone number, or URL on Google Maps that leads to fraudulent activity, you can now submit a complaint using this form.

We’ll close the Spam board on this community, so please use the new form to report spam-related issues.”

Joy Hawkins, a local SEO, asked few question about it to Google and posted more details in the Local Search Fourm

Do I get a response when the report was processed?You’ll get a generic response but it will be just like social support where they tell you that since it’s not a business you manage, you won’t get an update on what happened. For this reason, I suggest setting a reminder for yourself to just check back in a few weeks.

What if I want to report tons of locations at once?There is a spreadsheet upload option on the form – use this option

What if I don’t want to tell Google the business it’s impacting?Lots of business owners are reluctant to report spam because they don’t want their competitors knowing they were the ones to report it. The safest bet here is just to put NA in those fields.

Can I use this form to report fake reviews?Not currently. You should send these requests to Google’s social support. You can tweet to them at @googlemybiz or message them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/GoogleMyBusiness/. Usually they respond in 1-5 business days.